


amor omnibus idem

by fugues



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Ephebophilia, M/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1088103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fugues/pseuds/fugues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers that first time in Heartland’s office, rolling his eyes all the way there because, really, what difference was it going to make to have a different headmaster? Remembers standing there, sullen and closed off, and muttering out the usual faked 'sorry, won’t do it again' only to have the end of a cane pressed under his chin to jerk his head up. Remembers the, “Now, now, Thomas, speak up.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	amor omnibus idem

**Author's Note:**

> written for sofie during the zexal au swap. highschool au (or secondary school technically bc seriously how does middleschool/highschool even work and also this place has a sixth form) burnships in a shitty private academy. thomas is banging the headteacher proud of you thomas.

Thomas doesn’t remember when it had started  _meaning_  something, the time between them.  

He remembers that first time in Heartland’s office, rolling his eyes all the way there because, really, what difference was it going to make to have a different headmaster? Remembers standing there, sullen and closed off, and muttering out the usual faked  _sorry, won’t do it again_  only to have the end of a cane pressed under his chin to jerk his head up. Remembers the, “Now, now, Thomas, speak up.”

Remembers staring, wide-eyed, and breathing out, “Didn’t think teachers were supposed to do things like this,” only to have Heartland chuckle under his breath and force Thomas to lift his head further.

“Perhaps not,” Heartland had allowed, “But I’m not quite a teacher, dear boy, and besides that – it worked as I intended, did it not?”

So… yeah. He remembers the first time in Heartland’s office, certainly, the memory practically etched into his mind. He remembers the first kiss, too; when he’d actually listened to Heartland for the first time. He’d kissed him then; slammed the A+ down on Heartland’s desk and leaned in and kissed him in a rush, a childish expression of gladness. It had been one thing to know the whole time that he  _could_  do the things they were studying in class – that they were below him for that matter, given the year-ahead textbooks he’d kept files of on his phone to read through in class rather than doing the actual work assigned – but it had been another thing entirely to see the evidence in front of him in bright red ink, see the frown on the teacher’s face as she’d put down Thomas’s first test above a D since Byron had died. So he’d run in and he’d leaned over the desk and kissed Heartland and then he’d jerked back, he’d covered his mouth and fumbled through an  _oh god I’m sorry I didn’t mean to_  and Heartland had only congratulated Thomas on the grade, his expression unreadable.

He remembers, too, the first time Heartland had kissed  _him_. Tilted his chin up – with gloved fingers this time, not the cane – and pressed his lips to Thomas’s, and Thomas barely remembers the  _why_  of it but he remembers the kiss itself like it’s imprinted on him. Short and chaste and barely a kiss at all but he still can’t forget it because his breath had caught and his stomach had leapt and then Heartland had stepped back and smiled like it was nothing, like it had been a simple handshake rather than a kiss.

(remembers the kiss that had been the first to lead somewhere  _more_ ; the first kiss of many that had trailed down his neck and then even further on an afternoon that had ended with him underneath Heartland’s desk and sucking)

He thinks about asking, now and then. Asking when it started to matter to Heartland, when it really became a  _thing_ , except that every time he thinks about it he wonders, despite himself, whether it  _does_  matter. Whether this is really two-sided at all; whether it means anything more to Heartland than a warm and willing body and Thomas not dragging down the average test scores for every class he’s in any more.

So he puts it off. Wonders, and doesn’t ask, and then in sixth year it all comes out and Thomas doesn’t – can’t, really – dwell on it for a while. He gets caught up, instead, in the rumors behind his back and the rumors right in front of his face; the people who accuse him of sleeping with the headmaster for grades and the ones, less common, who treat him like some sort of manipulated child victim.

( _I chose this, and not for **grades**_ , he growls out when he and Heartland manage to snatch short, fate-tempting moments after dark; rants and snarls about it until Heartland silences him and steals his words with lips and tongue and more besides)

So it goes that way, and Thomas doesn’t question it, and then it almost… becomes unimportant, really. After all the risk to his job, to his reputation, he supposes Heartland must see  _something_  worth holding onto, mustn’t he?

In the end, it takes a quiet moment, the calm in the wake of the storm, before he brings it up. A substitute who’d not let him go to the office once he’d finished his work, and the routine is  _important_  to Thomas – even ignoring Heartland’s presence, for that matter, it’s still important for him – and he’d raged at it and not even, in the end, managed to get himself sent out. And it’s in the aftermath of that, curled quiet and calming in Heartland’s lap, that he finally breathes out, “Sir?”

Asks, slow and stumbling, when he started to  _matter_. When he became someone individual, someone important as  _him_  and not just a part of the student body. When, exactly, he stopped being a part of the crowd.

And for a long while Heartland only watches him, expression unreadable, and then tips Thomas’s chin up to look better at his face.

“My first day here, you came striding into my office, Byron Arkwright’s son and looking like  _this_. No grades to speak of but anyone with half a brain could tell that you ought to be top of your class. And you think you were ever a part of the crowd, Thomas?”


End file.
